I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written 'a long
letter' _to_ the letter!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 11, 1846.]
My sweetest 'plague,' _did_ I really write that sentence so, without
gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it--but you
know well, well where the real plague lay,--that I thought of you as
thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had
kept me from you--and if I did not dwell more particularly on that
thinking of _yours_, which became as I say, in the knowledge of it, a
plague when brought before me _with_ the thought of you,--if I passed
this slightly over it was for pure unaffected shame that I should take
up the care and stop the 'reverie serene' of--ah, the rhyme _lets_ me
say--'sweetest eyes were ever seen'--were _ever_ seen! And yourself
confess, in the Saturday's note, to having been 'unhappy for half an
hour till' &c. &c.--and do not I feel _that_ here, and am not I
plagued by it?
Well, having begun at the end of your letter, dearest, I will go back
gently (that is backwards) and tell you I 'sate thinking' too, and
with no greater comfort, on the cold yesterday. The pond before the
window was frozen ('so as to bear sparrows' somebody said) and I knew
you would feel it--'but you are not unwell'--really? thank God--and
the month wears on. Beside I have got a reassurance--you asked me once
if I were superstitious, I remember (as what do I forget that you
say?). However that may be, yesterday morning as I turned to look for
a book, an old fancy seized me to try the 'sortes' and dip into the
first page of the first I chanced upon, for my fortune; I said 'what
will be the event of my love for Her'--in so many words--and my book
turned out to be--'Cerutti's Italian Grammar!'--a propitious source of
information ... the best to be hoped, what could it prove but some
assurance that you were in the Dative Case, or I, not in the ablative
absolute? I do protest that, with the knowledge of so many horrible
pitfalls, or rather spring guns with wires on every bush ... such
dreadful possibilities of stumbling on 'conditional moods,' 'imperfect
tenses,' 'singular numbers,'--I should have been too glad to put up
with the safe spot for the sole of my foot though no larger than
afforded by such a word as 'Conjunction,' 'possessive pronoun--,'
secure so far from poor Tippet's catastrophe. Well, I ventured, and
what did I find? _This_--which I copy from the book now--'_If we love
in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to
eternity_'--from 'Promiscuous Exercises,' to be translated into
Italian, at the end.
And now I reach Horne and his characteristics--of which I can tell you
with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not
altogether false--whether it proceed from inability to see what one
may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne,
but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of
those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses,
meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter
he had hired once,--how it galloped and could not walk; also he
propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when
a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the
sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in
that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself--but when thrown there,
he can talk, with Miss Mitford's leave, admirably,--I never heard
better stories than Horne's--some Spanish-American incidents of travel
want printing--or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares
for nobody's poetry is _false_, he praises more unregardingly of his
own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,--(do I speak
clearly?)--less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the
'line' of the other man he is praising--which 'somewhat' has to be
guarded in its interests, &c., less like the poor professional praise
of the 'craft' than any other I ever met--instance after instance
starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him
allude--unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time
we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by
somebody's withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article,
and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which
does not look like 'boasting of his income'! As for the heiresses--I
don't believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and
trafficking. Altogether, what miserable 'set-offs' to the achievement
of an 'Orion,' a 'Marlowe,' a 'Delora'! Miss Martineau understands him
better.
Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now--at all
events, much better, just a little turning in the head--since you
appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee--thank you, indeed thank you,
but nothing after the '_oenomel_' and before half past six. _I_ know
all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not--and can
tell you--, how truly...!
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine--
But might I of Jove's nectar sup
I would not change for thine! _No, no, no!_
And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of
wine, 'that I do not touch it'--not habitually, nor so as to feel the
loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of course.
And now, 'Luria', so long as the parts cohere and the whole is
discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think
of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia
is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,--it
was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so
narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper 'pro memoria'
was, under the 'Act V.' '_she loves_'--to which I could not bring it,
you see! Yet the play requires it still,--something may yet be
effected, though.... I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa
with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry--I suppose it is
no use publishing much before Easter--I will try and remember what my
whole character _did_ mean--it was, in two words, understood at the
time by 'panther's-beauty'--on which hint I ought to have spoken! But
the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire
on the hearth _nec vult panthera domari_!
For the 'Soul's Tragedy'--_that_ will surprise you, I think. There is
no trace of you there,--you have not put out the black face of
_it_--it is all sneering and _disillusion_--and shall not be printed
but burned if you say the word--now wait and see and then say! I will
bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.
And now, dearest, I am with you--and the other matters are forgotten
already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I
trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.
_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, February 12, 1846.]
Ah, the 'sortes'! Is it a double oracle--'swan and shadow'--do you
think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? 'I shall
love thee to eternity'--I _shall_.
And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you 'as my wont
is,' because I understood simply that 'habitually' you abstained from
wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your
health to take it habitually. It _might_, you know--not that I pretend
to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes
into one's thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold
water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare
to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver _me_
from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison.
And your 'quite well' means that dreadful 'turning' still ... still!
Now do not think any more of the Domizias, nor 'try to remember,'
which is the most wearing way of thinking. The more I read and read
your 'Luria,' the grander it looks, and it will make its own road with
all understanding men, you need not doubt, and still less need you try
to make me uneasy about the harm I have done in 'coming between,' and
all the rest of it. I wish never to do you greater harm than just
_that_, and then with a white conscience 'I shall love thee to
eternity!... dearest! You have made a golden work out of your
'golden-hearted Luria'--as once you called him to me, and I hold it in
the highest admiration--_should_, if you were precisely nothing to me.
And still, the fifth act _rises_! That is certain. Nevertheless I seem
to agree with you that your hand has vacillated in your Domizia. We do
not know her with as full a light on her face, as the other
persons--we do not see the _panther_,--no, certainly we do not--but
you will do a very little for her which will be everything, after a
time ... and I assure you that if you were to ask for the manuscript
before, you should not have a page of it--_now_, you are only to rest.
What a work to rest upon! Do consider what a triumph it is! The more I
read, the more I think of it, the greater it grows--and as to 'faded
lines,' you never cut a pomegranate that was redder in the deep of it.
Also, no one can say 'This is not clearly written.' The people who are
at 'words of one syllable' may be puzzled by you and Wordsworth
together this time ... as far as the expression goes. Subtle thoughts
you always must have, in and out of 'Sordello'--and the objectors
would find even Plato (though his medium is as lucid as the water that
ran beside the beautiful plane-tree!) a little difficult perhaps.
To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific
confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he
had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see
me ... 'remembering' (he added) 'that Mr. Browning took _Saturday_!!'
So I let him mistake the one week for the other--'Mr. Browning took
Saturday,' it was true, both ways. Well--and then he went on to tell
me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell,
and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire
besides--now, what do you think, she enquired besides? 'how you and
... Browning were' said Mr. Kenyon--I write his words. He is coming,
perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday--Saturday is to have a twofold
safety. That is, if you are not ill again. Dearest, you will not think
of coming if you are ill ... unwell even. I shall not be frightened
next time, as I told you--I shall have the precedent. Before, I had to
think! 'It has never happened _so_--there must be a cause--and if it
is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell _me_ ... it will not
seem _my_ concern'--_that_ was my thought on Saturday. But another
time ... only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved,
and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for
your suffering ... my waiting is nothing. I shall remember for the
future that you may have the headache--and do you remember it too!
For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. _She
blots_ with her _eyes_ sometimes. She hates ... and loves, in extreme
degrees. We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of
mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to
observe the trust on one side and the _dyspathy_ on the other--using
the mildest of words. You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in
quite a strange element of society,--he, an artist in his good and his
evil,--and the people there, 'county families,' smoothly plumed in
their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of
using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law. Then,
meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times
worse. Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated
impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses,--all
these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I
dare say, and just the things suited to the _genus_ poet, and to
himself specifically,--were understood by the natives and their 'rural
deities' to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county,
and to run away with the other. But Miss Mitford should have known
better--_she_ should. And she _would_ have known better, if she had
liked him--for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences.
She is too fervent a friend--she can be. Generous too, she can be
without an effort; and I have had much affection from her--and accuse
myself for seeming to have less--but--
May God bless you!--I end in haste after this long lingering.